Aimal Kasi
Aimal Kasi ( ), also known as Mir Aimal Kasi, was a Pakistani assailant involved in the 1993 shootings at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In the incident, Kasi killed two CIA employees and wounded another three before escaping to Pakistan. Background Kasi was born on either 10 February 1964 or 1 January 1967 in Quetta, Pakistan. He entered the United States in 1991, taking a substantial sum of cash he had inherited on the death of his father in 1989. He travelled on forged papers he had purchased in Karachi, Pakistan, altering his name to "Kansi", and later bought a fake green card in Miami, Florida.Stein, J. "Convicted assassin: 'I wanted to shoot the CIA director'", Salon.com, January 22, 1998. He stayed with a Kashmiri friend, Zahed Mir,Davis, P. & Glod, M. "CIA Shooter Kansi, Harbinger of Terror, Set to Die Tonight", Washington Post, November 14, 2002. in his Reston, Virginia apartment, and invested in a courier firm for which he also worked as a driver.Justice A. Christian Compton, Virginia Supreme Court Opinion on Mir Aimal Kansi, November 6, 1998. This work would be decisive in his choice of target: "I used to pass this area almost every day and knew these two left-turning lanes were mostly people who work for CIA." According to Kasi, his first thoughts of an attack came after the purchase of an Chinese-made AK-47 from a Chantilly gun store. The plan soon became "more important than any other thing to him." Shootings On January 25, 1993, Kasi stopped a borrowed brown Datsun station wagonBill Miller. "Gunsmith Says Tip on Kansi Went Unheeded; ATF Disputes Employee's Account", Washington Post, ''Feb. 12, 1993 behind a number of vehicles waiting at a red traffic light on the eastbound side of Route 123, Fairfax County.Steve Coll, "Ghost Wars", New York: Penguin Books, 2004, pp. 246–247 The vehicles were waiting to make a left turn into the main entrance of CIA headquarters. Kasi emerged from his vehicle with his Chinese-made AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and proceeded to move among the lines of vehicles, firing a total of 10 rounds into them,Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. "The Age of Sacred Terror", 2002 killing Lansing H. Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28. Three others were left with gunshot wounds. Darling was shot first and later received additional gunshot wounds to the head after Kasi shot the other victims. Kasi climbed back into his vehicle and drove to a nearby park. After 90 minutes of waiting, it became clear that he was not being actively sought and so he drove back to his Reston apartment. He hid the rifle in a green plastic bag under a sofa, went to a McDonald's for something to eat, and booked himself into a Days Inn for the night. The CNN news reports he watched made it clear that police had misidentified his vehicle and did not have his license plate number. The next morning, he took a flight to Quetta, Pakistan. According to Kansi, he killed American CIA people because, "I was real angry with the policy of the U.S. government in the Middle East, particularly toward the Palestinian people," Kansi said in a prison interview with CNN affiliate WTTG.ARCHIVES CNN Pakistani man executed for CIA killings November 15, 2002 On February 16, 1993, Kasi, then a fugitive, had been charged in absentia. The charges involved capital murder of Darling, murder of Bennett, and three counts of malicious wounding for the other victims, along with related firearms charges. Arrest and rendition In May 1997, an informant walked into the U.S. consulate in Karachi and claimed he could help lead them to Kasi. As proof, he showed a copy of a driver license application made by Kasi under a false name but bearing his photograph. Apparently, the people who had been sheltering Kasi were now prepared to accept the multi-million dollar reward offer for his capture. Kasi stated "I want to make it clear (that) the people who tricked me ... were Pushtuns, they were owners of land in the Leghari and Khosa clan areas in Dera Ghazi Khan, but I will never name them."Hasan, K. "How Aimal Kasi was betrayed", ''Daily Times (Pakistan), June 23, 2004. Kasi was in the dangerous Durand Line border region, so the informant was told to lure Kasi into Pakistan where he could be more easily apprehended. Kasi was tempted with a lucrative business offer—smuggling Russian electronic goods into Pakistan—which brought him to Dera Ghazi Khan, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, where he checked into a room at Shalimar Hotel. At 4 a.m. on the morning of June 15, 1997, an armed team of FBI officers working with the Pakistani ISI, raided Kasi's hotel room. His fingerprints were taken on the scene, confirming his identity. There is some dispute over where Kasi was taken next—US authorities claim it was a holding facility run by Pakistani authorities, while Pakistani sources claim it was the U.S. embassy in Islamabad — before being flown to the US on June 17 in a C-141 transport.Khan, R. "In search of truth", DAWN, November 24, 2002. During the flight, Kasi made a full oral and written confession to the FBI. Trial During the trial the defense introduced testimony from Dr. Richard Restak a neurologist and also a neuropsychiatrist, that Kasi was missing tissue from his frontal lobes, a congenital defect that made it hard for him to judge the consequence of his actions. This testimony was re-iterated by another psychiatrist for the defense based upon independent examination. Kasi was tried by a Virginia state court jury over a period of ten days in November 1997, on a plea of not guilty to all charges. The jury found him guilty, and fixed punishment for the capital murder charge at death. On February 4, 1998, Kasi was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Darling, who was shot at the beginning of the attack and again after the other victims had been shot. Among his other punishments were a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Bennett, multiple 20-year sentences for the malicious woundings, and fines totalling $600,000. Execution and burial Kasi was executed by lethal injection on November 14, 2002, at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia.Glod, M. & Weiss, E. "Kansi Executed For CIA Slayings, Washington Post, November 15, 2002. Kasi's body was repatriated to Pakistan, his funeral was attended by the entire civil hierarchy of Balochistan, the local Pakistan Army Corps Commander and the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi."Pakistan's Foreign Policy Predicaments Post 9/11", South Asia Analyst Group, Paper No. 564, December 12, 2002 See also *Farooque Ahmed, Pakistani American arrested for plotting bombing of Washington Metro *David Headley, Chicago-based Pakistani-American, and half-brother of Pakistani Prime Minister's spokesman, made contact with al-Qaeda during trips to Waziristan and conspired with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistani ex-military officers to launch the 2008 Mumbai attacks and other terrorist activity *Operation Arabian Knight, 2010 arrest of two Muslim men from New Jersey on terrorism charges *Faisal Shahzad – convicted Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan operative sentenced to life in prison for 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt *Aafia Siddiqui, U.S.-educated Pakistani alleged al-Qaeda member, arrested in Afghanistan with bomb-making documents and convicted in February 2010 of attempted murder and armed assault *Najibullah Zazi, U.S. resident and al-Qaeda member, pleaded guilty in 2010 of planning suicide bombings of New York City subway References External links Category:1964 births Category:1967 births Category:2002 deaths Category:Islamist terrorism in the United States Category:People from Quetta Category:People executed by lethal injection Category:Pakistani people executed abroad Category:People executed by Virginia Category:Pakistani Islamists Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Category:University of Balochistan alumni Category:Central Intelligence Agency